14 DAY TRIAL // We hate to give you guys sad news, but it appears that the Oculus Rift VR headset, which is set to be released worldwide sometime in Q1 next year, won't come with support for the GNU/Linux and Mac OS X platforms.
According to a recent announcement, the creators of the Oculus Rift VR headset said that they are putting the development of the Oculus Rift platform for Linux and Mac OS X operating systems on hold for the time being.
Oculus developers said the decision to pause the Mac OS X and Linux development of the Oculus Rift platform was taken in order for them to concentrate all of their efforts on delivering a high-quality consumer-level VR experience of the Oculus Rift VR headset to Windows users in early 2016.
"Our development for OS X and Linux has been paused in order to focus on delivering a high quality consumer-level VR experience at launch across hardware, software, and content on Windows," says Atman Binstock, Chief Architect at Oculus and technical director of the Rift. "We want to get back to development for OS X and Linux but we don’t have a timeline."
The recommended, minimum PC specs have been announced
In a separate announcement, the Oculus Rift developers published the VR headset's recommended PC specifications, giving virtual reality fans enough time to build the ideal gaming system. Apparently, these recommended specs are here to stay, as they will be constant over the lifetime of the Oculus Rift VR headset.
According to Oculus, users should own a quite modern computer powered by an Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater central processing unit, a NVIDIA GTX 970 or AMD 290 equivalent or better graphics processing unit, at least 8GB RAM, compatible HDMI 1.3 video output, 2x USB 3.0 ports, and Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 or newer operating system.